SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

gitmerge-base finds best common ancestor(s) between two commits to use in a three-way
merge. One common ancestor is better than another common ancestor if the latter is an
ancestor of the former. A common ancestor that does not have any better common ancestor is
a bestcommonancestor, i.e. a mergebase. Note that there can be more than one merge base
for a pair of commits.

OPERATIONMODE

As the most common special case, specifying only two commits on the command line means
computing the merge base between the given two commits.
More generally, among the two commits to compute the merge base from, one is specified by
the first commit argument on the command line; the other commit is a (possibly
hypothetical) commit that is a merge across all the remaining commits on the command line.
As a consequence, the mergebase is not necessarily contained in each of the commit
arguments if more than two commits are specified. This is different from git-show-branch(1) when used with the --merge-base option.
--octopus
Compute the best common ancestors of all supplied commits, in preparation for an n-way
merge. This mimics the behavior of gitshow-branch--merge-base.
--independent
Instead of printing merge bases, print a minimal subset of the supplied commits with
the same ancestors. In other words, among the commits given, list those which cannot
be reached from any other. This mimics the behavior of gitshow-branch--independent.

OPTIONS

-a, --all
Output all merge bases for the commits, instead of just one.

DISCUSSION

Given two commits A and B, git merge-base A B will output a commit which is reachable from
both A and B through the parent relationship.
For example, with this topology:
o---o---o---B
/
---o---1---o---o---o---A
the merge base between A and B is 1.
Given three commits A, B and C, git merge-base A B C will compute the merge base between A
and a hypothetical commit M, which is a merge between B and C. For example, with this
topology:
o---o---o---o---C
/
/ o---o---o---B
/ /
---2---1---o---o---o---A
the result of git merge-base A B C is 1. This is because the equivalent topology with a
merge commit M between B and C is:
o---o---o---o---o
/ \
/ o---o---o---o---M
/ /
---2---1---o---o---o---A
and the result of git merge-base A M is 1. Commit 2 is also a common ancestor between A
and M, but 1 is a better common ancestor, because 2 is an ancestor of 1. Hence, 2 is not a
merge base.
The result of git merge-base --octopus A B C is 2, because 2 is the best common ancestor
of all commits.
When the history involves criss-cross merges, there can be more than one best common
ancestor for two commits. For example, with this topology:
---1---o---A
\ /
X
/ \
---2---o---o---B
both 1 and 2 are merge-bases of A and B. Neither one is better than the other (both are
best merge bases). When the --all option is not given, it is unspecified which best one is
output.